


Frankincense

by apparitionism



Series: Magi [2]
Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bering & Wells Holiday Gift Exchange, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-16
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-08-24 16:30:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16643723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apparitionism/pseuds/apparitionism
Summary: For your next course, to followGoldin this Christmas feast, I have a rather light, if slightly lengthy, AU. It is about the making of extremely sentimental Christmas-themed made-for-TV movies—and you will most likely be unsurprised to learn that it is itself extremely sentimental, in the manner of a Christmas-themed made-for-TV movie.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A while ago, I ran across some information on the executive vice president for programming at the Hallmark cable networks: a major part of her job is, as you might imagine, handling the slate of original Christmas movies that the Hallmark Channel runs every year. I thought that had some potential, AU-wise, so in this little tale, one H.G. Wells is, in some sense, that EVP (though I hasten to add that she is in no way meant to resemble the real woman who holds the job), and her assistant is one Claudia Donovan. We fade in on the two of them in Helena’s office in Studio City, California. It is mid-July, a time when everyone in that office, and at that network, is feverishly preparing for Christmas. (P.S.: A particular group’s name is indeed a takeoff on a Queen Latifah song, a fact that I’m sure no one but me cares about.)

“No,” Helena says. “We did one last year involving baking.”

Claudia shakes her head. “That was cookies. This is cakes. Totally different.”

“If there must be a food-related one, couldn’t it be something else entirely? Sandwiches?”

“Not warm enough.”

“Soup?”

“Not sweet enough.”

“So any food-related story we tell must involve a sugary baked good?” Helena is looking at the calendar on her computer screen, and Claudia has the same calendar on hers—it combines production schedules and programming slots, all vividly color-coded, and several of those programming slots remain unfilled. Thus production, speaking of baked goods, is at present looking like a cakewalk. It will not continue to look like that.

“It’s like you don’t understand the true meaning of Christmas.” Claudia sighs.

“You sound as if you’re trying out for a part in one of the films. And after six years of this, it’s more like I’d prefer to have Christmas stricken from the calendar.”

“The true meaning of Christmas is that it makes this network a ton of money.”

“True.”

“Which also means that you make a slightly smaller ton of money.”

“Also true.”

“Which also, down a few steps, means that I make enough for rent and my car payment. Plus the occasional sugary baked good.”

“According to the formula, you should meet someone tall, dark, and handsome while purchasing said good. Or perhaps while dropping it clumsily.”

“Yeah, well, life doesn’t go according to the formula.” Claudia pauses, then suggests, “Dog-walking.”

“Speaking of formula. We have _done_ dog-walking. Over and over again, we have done dog-walking, with the only variation being the breed of dog being walked.”

“Not true, but okay. Cat-walking.”

“The vast number of directions in which that one phrase might be taken is truly terrifying.”

“Good point. Hey, have we done models?”

“Insufficiently relatable.”

“The supermodel’s the _bad guy_ in this. The heroine’s the assistant at the agency.”

“And who serves as the tall, dark, and handsome figure in this scenario?”

“The photographer. Duh. Who’s shooting the Christmas spread for whatever magazine or catalog shoot or whatever. Duh.”

“I like that. Assign it to someone, see what they come up with. That leaves how many more slots?” Helena squints at the calendar. Models could fit somewhere in early December… hm… catalog shoot… opportunities for product placement…

“Slot, slot, slot,” Claudia mumbles. “Slot machines. Vegas!”

“No. The demographic is on the whole opposed to gambling.”

“But they like it when people gamble on loooove. Hey, how about love slot machines!”

“That sounds like a dystopian nightmare. Or possibly pornography.”

“Potayto, potahto.”

“No gambling, Claudia.”

“Potatoes!”

“Unromantic.”

“It’s like you’ve never shared your fries with someone.”

“It is very like that. Now shoo. I have a conference call shortly.”

“You wouldn’t take the time to share fries with anybody, anyway,” Claudia mutters, just a bit sourly, as she leaves. Helena would protest, but it’s true. Not that she has anyone with whom she wants to take the time to share much of anything. And not that she has much leisure time from which she might carve that shared time, either.

****

Claudia runs into Helena’s office. She stands and hyperventilates. Helena waits a moment, but when no words are forthcoming, she says, “I am not psychic. You have to speak.”

“You,” Claudia pants, “will. not. believe. this.”

“Is this something I’m going to _want_ to believe? Or is this a ‘both leads in the production that starts shooting next Tuesday have broken their legs’ situation?”

“Come on, I know you’d believe that, because it happened. But this one, you’re gonna want to believe in it like _Santa Claus_. Do you know what Christmas song we might be able to get?”

“The John Lennon one,” Helena guesses.

“What? No.”

“The Paul McCartney one,” she tries next.

“No.”

“The Ringo Starr one.”

“Ringo has a Christmas song?”

“How can you not know that, having worked for me for… nearly two years now? With that, however, I have run out of Beatles, because alas, George Harrison has only a New Year’s song.”

“It’s not a Beatle!” She stops. “Although it’s closer than you think, maybe, in terms of mania. You know U.N.I.3.Y.?”

Helena laughs. “The boy band? Of course I do.”

“Well, they’re putting out a Christmas song this year, and it’s gonna be _huge_. And somebody from their label said that their manager needs to meet with you to talk about us using it… and… wait for it…” Claudia starts leaping in place. Literally leaping.

“And what? What am I waiting for?”

“And the boys themselves! Whoever from the label said they want to put them in one of our movies, just, like, a cameo because they want to try out the acting thing! Can you believe it? We’re gonna break that ratings ceiling we’ve been pushing up against, I totally know it! Bonuses for everybody!”

“Wait. You said their _manager_ needs a meeting.” Claudia nods. “But if the boys want to do this, why wouldn’t Nev just call me?”

“Now _you_ wait. Nev? Nev from the band?”

“Well of course Nev from the band.”

“Why would Nev call _you_?”

“Possibly because he is a member of my family.”

“How is Nev a member of your family? Isn’t he Egyptian or whatever?”

“He is not Egyptian. His mother is from Somalia, and his father is my brother.”

“Nev—from U.N.I.3.Y., the biggest boy band in the world—is _your_ nephew.”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t tell me.”

“I wasn’t aware you cared. About boy bands, that is. Now, if my nephew were in… ah…”

“You have no idea what kind of music I like, do you.”

“None whatsoever,” Helena has no choice but to admit. “But I’m thrilled that Nev—Nev _Wells_ , incidentally, which might have given you a clue—and his two little friends meet with your approval.”

Claudia raises her eyebrows. “Nev and his ‘little’ friends? Aren’t they in their twenties?”

“Nev and Kenny went to school together. That froze them for me at around fourteen. I don’t know Tak at all—he could be anywhere from fifteen to fifty.”

“Tak isn’t fifty. Little girls throwing themselves at him would be really, really creepy then.”

“It’s a bit creepy that _you_ seem willing to throw yourself at them.”

“Have you ever actually _seen_ your nephew?” She raises her arms at Helena, spreading them wide, as if only such a gesture could begin to express the extent of Nev’s beauty.

Helena knows that Nev is a lovely boy. He does look, now that Claudia has mentioned it, as if his face might have been copied from an ancient Egyptian temple relief, with his sharp cheekbones, deep-set eyes (of a hazel extracted from some arcane strand of both his mother’s and his father’s DNA), pointed chin. Since he left school, his once extremely black locks have changed color as quickly as his mood. His mother, Jamilah, thinks he looks dashing regardless of his hair. His father—Helena’s brother Charles—had early on taken to muttering about how black hair served both sides of this family quite well for generations, young man. Now that that hair has taken on a life of its own among Nev’s fans (very nearly literally; it has its own Instagram), Charles has backed off a bit.

“I’ll let his parents know how well their genetic experiment paid off,” she tells Claudia.

****

Nev surprises Helena with a visit a few days later—he shows up, unannounced, at her office. “It’s me!” he declares to Helena after he hugs her. “Your newest movie star!” His hair is turquoise. It makes his eyes look an uncanny orange.

“What are you doing in Los Angeles? Even if this film situation works out—and I don’t know if it will—I’d have thought you’d need to work around your touring.”

“Nah… Kenny busted his ankle up. Can’t dance for three hours every night.”

“Is that why you want to be in one of my films?”

“Well… see, we got this new manager. Well, not so new anymore. But she’s way better than Larry was.”

“And this new manager wants you to be in a film,” Helena guesses.

A negative shake of turquoise. “Nah. Myka’s her name. Based here in L.A., so we’re gonna record here for a while. Anyway, she’s lovely. And real pro.”

“Are you being intentionally cryptic?” She hears a _thunk_ from outside her office. She calls, “Claudia, come in, would you? You can gaze upon him. He won’t mind.”

Nev whispers to Helena, “I like her—talked to her yesterday, let her know I was coming. She’s a smart one.”

“Claudia, why didn’t you tell me Nev was going to be here?”

“He wanted it to be a surprise.”

“Why?” Helena asks them both.

“Can’t a boy surprise his auntie?”

“Apparently a boy _can_. Whether a boy _should_ …”

“Anyway, you got a meeting with Myka tomorrow, right?”

“Have I?”

“Tomorrow,” Claudia says, “yes you do.”

Nev says, “So I’ll take you out to dinner tomorrow night, auntie, and you can tell me how it went.”

“Can I.”

“I’m at the Chateau. You can pick me up eightish.”

“Can I. What if I’m busy?” But she’s smiling, because he’s smiling, and it’s very difficult not to smile when Nev is smiling.

“Claudia, she busy tomorrow eightish?”

Claudia is smiling too. “Nope. I’ll make her leave here in time to get you. And good for you for getting her out of here that early.”

“Taking a strong liking to you, Claudia,” Nev says, and then to Helena, “and I told you Myka’s real pro, yeah? So no auntie-you and nephew-me. And no letting it slip I came by to prep you, either.”

“You haven’t prepped me,” Helena notes.

“No need to bring me up at all then,” he says. “I was never here.” He winks at the both of them, and he departs in what seems to be a heavenly cloud of light-blue candy floss.

“If my nephew was never here,” Helena says to Claudia, “then who was that strangely coiffed young man?”

Claudia sighs. “The ghost of Christmas _gorgeous_.”

****

When Myka Bering, the supposedly lovely, real-pro manager who is new but not so new anymore, walks into Helena’s office, Helena’s first thought is: she _is_ lovely. Her second thought, based on the fact that Myka does not sit down when Helena does, after shaking her hand, is: she seems in a hurry. Real pro? Helena stands again.

Then Myka Bering says, with a tap of a sensibly booted foot, “I’m not quite sure why I’m here.”

Yes, in a hurry—an annoyed hurry at that. Yet Helena considers saying “So that I may gaze upon you.” What she actually musters is, “Interesting you should say that. Neither am I, given the—”

“Someone at your network had this idea. I don’t know why. I don’t like the kind of movies you make, and I can’t imagine the boys do either.”

Well. That was blunt. “I don’t make them.”

“What?”

“The movies. _I_ don’t make them.”

“You decide what _should_ be made,” Myka says.

“I do that,” Helena concedes.

“Then I guess what I’m saying is, don’t like the kind of movies you tell other people to make.”

Helena hardens her… heart? Why is her heart involved in this? “Elitist, are we? Opposed to the simple pleasures?”

“I’m fine with the simple pleasures. It’s the stereotypical, clichéd pleasures that get to me.”

“‘Christmas’ and ‘true love’ are not clichés,” Helena says, and even as she is speaking, she is asking herself what in the world has possessed her. Claudia would goggle at hearing such words come out of her mouth.

“In your hands they are,” Myka is saying.

And now Helena can at least say, truthfully, “In my hands, they _make money_. Besides, do your young clients make music that is in some way _un_ stereotypical? Why would I, or anyone, want to use a Christmas song of theirs if it were not appropriately clichéd?”

Myka says, “At least the boys singing that song don’t look like the people in your movies. And if you want them just to give you some multicultural cover while you keep all your leads lily-white, forget it.”

“What? Why do I need multicultural cover? I think perhaps you’ve been misinformed about our demographic.” But Helena has to admit that Myka is not wrong to object. She herself has said, in more than one interview, an absurdly spineless “we are looking at that” about the network’s continuing insistence on white faces—continuing insistence on white faces’ importance to the demographic, to be precise—and even that namby-pamby non-response has more than once brought a reprimand from those above her in the company.

“And I think perhaps _you’ve_ been misinformed about the boys’ demographic. Look, if you can come up with a real reason for them to do this, then I’ll listen. But I don’t see how this helps them. I see how it helps you, but I don’t see how it helps them.”

“I’m extremely confused. But I have a… meeting tonight that may provide some clarity. Could I get back to you on this?” She figures that will mean, if nothing else, that she will be able to gaze upon Myka Bering again. Because regardless of how little Myka thinks of Helena’s network and what appears on it, she is eminently gaze-worthy… and she is looking out for Nev and his bandmates. She _is_ “way better” than their previous manager.

****

“So where we going for food?” Nev asks when she picks him up.

“To my house, to order in. I refuse to spend the evening being interrupted by people requesting that you turn down the volume on your hair.” It is actually because of the fans, who manage to find him—shining like a beacon as he does—anywhere he goes in public.

“Now, listen,” she says, once they are in her kitchen, diving carnivorously into several cartons of Persian takeaway. “What is going on? Why did your Myka Bering meet me with an idea that my network had asked for you?”

“Why wouldn’t your network ask for me?”

“Claudia told me that your label had requested this.”

“Who knows who asks for anything in this business?” He waves a kebab at her.

“I don’t understand what the desired outcome is. Myka doesn’t want you to be in a movie for me.”

“Don’t _you_ want me to?”

“That would be fine. But why don’t you just tell her you’re doing it, regardless of what she says?”

“You met her. Would that work so good?”

“You’re _afraid_ of your new manager?” Though Helena can certainly see how that might be so… she might be in an annoyed hurry a great deal of the time. Helena looked up her clients, past and present, and Myka has over time developed a roster of acts that is not small. It does seem well-curated, however. Carefully thought.

“Not afraid so much as, she’s good at this,” Nev says, confirming exactly what Helena had gleaned from that roster. “I want her to keep on doing this for us, and I want her to be happy while she does.”

“A lovely sentiment. I still don’t understand.”

“I want you to be happy, too.”

“Also lovely. And still.”

He pulls on the slight nap of his turquoise mop. “Okay, try this: so wouldn’t good ratings make you happy?”

“They certainly wouldn’t hurt.”

“Then figure out a way to get her to say yes.”

“But what does she want? What will make her say yes?”

Nev shrugs. “Ask her.”

****

So Helena does ask, at their second meeting: “What is your path to yes?”

Myka squints. “Are you being serious?”

“I am. I can of course see that it would be beneficial for me to have the boys in a movie, so I am asking you, what will make you say yes?”

Myka squints again, as if by narrowing her lids she can compel Helena to admit to… something. Helena looks back as innocently as she can—and for once she feels that she has nothing she must conceal, which makes this not a negotiation but rather an appeasement of some sort. Myka could ask for the moon, but the boys already have large parts of the moon. Monetarily, certainly, and they have little need for publicity of the sort that appearing on Helena’s network would give them. All of this, as Helena thinks her way through it, makes Myka’s position completely understandable. It makes Nev’s utterly nonsensical. Could he possibly think that Helena is struggling in some way? That she needs his professional help? She opens her mouth to ask Myka whether Nev has mentioned anything about her, but Myka preempts her with, “You know what? Okay. If you want the boys, then cast a lead of color. I don’t want them looking like tokens. Or cover. Regardless of what you think your network does or doesn’t need.”

This takes Helena immediately back to being chastised for her public statements. She knows that if she were not considered valuable, she would have been fired rather than told to pipe down. But how much of a push for real change can her value to the company support? “I… I’m not sure I can do that.”

“Okay,” Myka says, but it is not a mean “okay.” It sounds like an acknowledgement that constraints exist. Helena appreciates that, at least. Myka goes on, “Then I guess we’re done.”

 _Ask her_ , Nev had said, and now Helena has her answer. If network does want the boys, this is how to get them. Claudia isn’t wrong about how they will goose the numbers… but this would be such a profound shift… but if it _works_ … Nev wants this to happen, for whatever reason he does. Helena doesn’t _not_ want this to happen. Myka is a good manager who is protecting the boys, and Nev wants his good manager to be happy. Helena doesn’t _not_ want that, no matter what the boys’ good—and lovely—manager thinks of her network. “Let’s not be done,” Helena says. “I’ll find a way to make it happen.”

The squint returns to Myka’s eyes, but after a moment, her expression clears. She offers a slightly adversarial, though still not mean, “Okay.”

“Okay,” Helena responds. She suspects she herself does not sound at all adversarial.

****

Claudia reports to Helena, “So the initial concept for the band’s movie is kind of ‘The Gift of the Magi.’”

“It is _always_ ‘The Gift of the Magi.’ In one form or another. Every year.”

“But this time with actual magi!”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Close, anyhow. The boys!”

“The boys are close to actual magi. Really. That will come as news to their parents. Well, Kenny’s and Nev’s. As I said, I don’t know Tak.”

“How many times do we have to have this conversation? They’re _awesome_.”

“They are not, however, wise men,” Helena points out.

“They don’t have to be. Look, it’s set in a children’s hospital. One of the patients makes a wish—one of those foundation-y things, but it turns out it’s _really_ a wish! The writers haven’t worked out who grants it yet, probably some angel? Anyway, the wish is for the boys, and they show up bearing gifts. They agree to hang around and play the wise men in the hospital Christmas pageant for some as-yet-unwritten reason, but then they have to back out, but _then_ people give things up for the O. Henry reasons they do, which for additional as-yet-unwritten reasons brings the boys back. And at the end they sing their song.”

“Speaking of their song,” Helena begins.

“Uh oh. You didn’t listen to it, did you?”

“I did.”

“Uh oh.”

“Couldn’t we replace it with something traditional? I really do hesitate to greenlight a film that closes with a song that is a thinly disguised paean to smoking marijuana at Christmastime.”

“Heh. Greenlight.”

“Honestly, Claudia.”

“It’s a metaphor!”

“A metaphor for what? Other controlled substances?”

“Christmas spirit? Look, the movie’s gonna be great, and any part of the demo that would care about the pot thing won’t get it. Plus the song’s gonna be a huuuuuuuge hit, and I can’t believe you won’t want to use it in every single commercial.”

“I am annoyed by how accurate you are. Fine, then. What is the romance?”

“The parent of the little wish-maker, a single dad, paired off with…” Claudia consults her notes. “A nurse.”

“Oh lord, not a nurse. Make her a doctor, or I’ll have Myka Bering back in my office delivering harsh words about gender stereotypes as well. “

“No problemo,” Claudia assures her. “You should see the script in two weeks, tops.”

Myka Bering is back in Helena’s office two weeks later, waving the script at her, saying harsh words about gender stereotypes. Because the nurse has _not_ been made into a doctor.

“I’ll see that it’s fixed,” Helena says, and once Myka, somewhat mollified, is gone, she shouts, “Claudia!”

“There was a… miscommunication.”

“And why didn’t I see the script before Ms. Bering did? Another miscommunication?”

“You must be psychic.”

****

One week after that, Myka is berating Helena on the telephone for breaking their deal; she has been told that casting agencies are seeking “Caucasian leads for untitled Hallmark medical Christmas drama.”

Helena wants to slam her head down onto her desk. In the most stereotypical fashion possible. Instead, she says, “I suspect that was a miscommunication.” She glares at Claudia, who is standing in front of her, wincing. “I’ll take care of it.”

****

The next fire flares when Claudia delivers to Helena’s desk an advance copy of a press release from the boys’ record label, stating that U.N.I.3.Y. will be “starring in” a production for the Hallmark Channel. Now Helena calls Myka and says, “That release is deliberately misleading, and you know it.”

Myka says, “What release is misleading? And what do I know about it?” Her words are distracted, but also bewildered.

Helena tries for severity in response—that hardened heart again. “Are you seriously trying to tell me that a press release about those boys goes out without touching your desk?”

“I’m trying to tell you that I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m going to find out.”

She hangs up on Helena, who says to dead air, “A pleasure speaking with you too.”

****

They meet once more in Helena’s office, the next day—Myka is complaining that no one will tell her where, or with whom, the erroneous release originated. This time, they have managed to get to, and through, pleasantries: Myka has sat down, and she has acknowledged that she would welcome a cup of coffee. “I don’t know what’s going on,” she says, “but I’m starting to think this whole thing is cursed. Honestly, I don’t understand why your network came up with this idea at all. Was it to drive the both of us crazy?”

Helena, too, feels that they are now in some joint predicament. She wants to open an umbrella over her own head and offer its protection to Myka as well. It’s a romantic image, however; it belongs nowhere near Myka, but rather in a stereotypical, though most likely non-Christmas, TV movie. “If so, it’s certainly having the intended effect,” Helena says. “I was going to say that _I_ don’t understand why network came up with it, if indeed they did, or why the boys’ record label did, if, as it happens, they are responsible… however, I am beginning to feel not cursed, but manipulated.” Manipulated... because who has brought her the most news? Who has conveyed the most information? “And now I am beginning to suspect that neither of those entities came up with anything. Claudia! In here now!” Claudia slinks in. “And is my nephew lurking around out there somewhere, just to make this picture complete?”

“He’s not here. You can tell because you’re not hearing the high-pitched squeals of teenagers.”

“Um,” Myka says. “Who’s your nephew?”

Helena stares. How, at this point, can she not know? “A certain young man whose hair is at present turquoise.”

“Turq—what? Oh. Wait. _Wells_. Oh my god, _Nev_ is your nephew?”

“Yes. That charming boy. Who with my charming deputy has for some reason contrived some elaborate… plan.”

“It was his idea to start with!” Claudia jabbers. “I didn’t even know him! But now I’m totally on board, and you should be too. Because it’s to help you out.”

“Mm hm,” Helena says. “Help me out, you say. With?”

“Higher ratings! What else could I possibly mean?”

“I haven’t figured that out yet. Myka, you do have my most sincere apologies. And in spite of it all, I will continue to work to make this film as successful as possible.” She has no choice about that, never mind the boys, and never mind Myka. First, if she backs down regarding the female lead being African American, she will have wasted the persuasive capital she used to convince her superiors to let her try. She does not want to admit to Myka that she cannot afford to lose face like that. But second—and she does not want to admit this either—if the film goes forward, as cast, and then bombs, she will without question lose her job. For this network, there is no such thing as a noble failure. She needs the boys now, because she needs the numbers they will bring.

“Your nephew,” Myka murmurs. She seems still stunned by this revelation that Helena and Nev are related, and Helena does wonder, just for a moment, why no one seems able to see any similarity between them. “Thank you for saying you’ll keep working? But I don’t get it. What’s Nev up to?”

Helena says, “I’m not entirely certain. But I will make every effort to find out.”

“Well. Now I will too.” She stands to leave, but then she gives Helena a quizzical look—a different one than she’s offered before. “So that makes you… Charles’s sister? And so I guess you know Kenny, and his family… but you don’t know Tak’s family. Do you?” She sounds strangely urgent.

“No,” Helena says. She has no idea why this matters to Myka..

Myka says a relieved “okay.”

“Okay,” Helena says back.

When Myka has gone, Helena turns to Claudia. “My dear assistant. Did network know about _any_ of this?” Silence. “Did the band’s label know about any of this?” Silence again. “Am I thus to conclude that this entire fiasco to date is a Claudia Donovan/Neville Wells production?” Yet more silence. “That sounds like a very good name for a company, by the way.”

“Am I fired?”

“No. Well, not yet. When _I’m_ fired, they’ll no doubt throw you out with me.”

“You and Nev and I can start Donovan/Wells Productions then.”

“When exactly _did_ you and Nev decide to become partners in crime?”

“When he told me all about his great idea. When he came to see you.”

“His great idea.”

“Right.”

“His great idea to cause me to lose my job.”

“That wasn’t really part of it.”

“Then what _was_ part of it?”

Claudia fidgets: weight on one foot, weight on the other. “I shouldn’t say. Nev should.” She shifts again. “I don’t think he will, though.”

****

Some days later, a Deadline article lists the channel’s upcoming slate of Christmas movies. Included in the list is something called “White Coat Christmas.”

Barely two minutes after Helena sees that on Twitter, Claudia runs in and says, “I know, it’s a terrible title, but I didn’t do it, and I don’t think Nev did either; I think this is just somebody down the chain desperately trying to get a release out on time.”

“It makes one think of the syndrome,” Helena complains. “What if simply seeing the title causes blood pressures to—”

“But also,” Claudia interrupts, “I’ve got Myka Bering on the phone for you, and in a shocking twist, she doesn’t sound happy. In fact, she sounds about as happy as you look. So you two can commiserate on feelings or something.”

Helena takes the call. She starts, “Before you say _one word_ , be advised that I can’t stand the title either.”

“Well,” Myka says. “Okay then.” She starts to say something, then changes it to “thank you.”

“Wait,” Helena says. To keep her talking. To keep her talking, just a little longer, when she is not angry. “I haven’t asked Nev lately—how is Kenny’s ankle?”

“Barely slowing him down at all,” Myka says. “He’s a handful.”

“He always was. If Nev found himself in trouble, Kenny was usually ultimately at fault.”

“And yet he sings like an angel,” Myka sighs out. She gives a small cough-laugh. “That line sounds like it belongs in one of your movies.”

This time, there’s no disdain in the accusation. Helena offers an echoing chuckle. She says, “He does. Have you heard his late father’s records? He sang a particular style of Indian classical, in his youth. I’m afraid I can’t remember what it’s called.”

“I can’t remember what it’s called either, but yes, I’ve heard those records, and they’re beautiful,” Myka says. There’s a pause, then she offers, “Young girls—well, I guess grown women too—are always putting Kenny in arranged marriages in their fanfiction. Why his parents would arrange for him to marry all races and religions, just because _he’s_ Indian, I really don’t get. But that’s what they do with him.”

“What on earth do they do with Nev?”

“You probably don’t want to know.”

“Mm,” Helena says. “That is very correct. I think his parents would prefer to be kept in the dark as well.”

“I’ve met them only once. I think Nev wanted to get their seal of approval before he and the others quit Larry and signed with me.”

“You’re such an improvement,” Helena says, then tries to recover by saying, “I mean managerially.” No, that sounded terrible, as if Larry could in any way have risen to Myka’s level. “But not just that,” she concludes. Myka will no doubt hang up on her now.

Instead, Myka laughs. The sound is outsize hearty, as if Myka has not laughed fully in some time and wants to make up for the lost time. “I’m not sure that’s what your brother thought at first. He doesn’t seem very fond of Americans.”

“He isn’t. You should be flattered.” _And thus I step back into it_. “What I mean is, impressing my brother, particularly where Nev is involved, can be a minefield. No, let’s go more general: my brother can be a minefield. I can tell you that all of Nev’s more annoying traits come from him, by the way.”

“Do you... miss him? Being here, I mean? Given his feelings about Americans, I bet he doesn’t come here much, and you can’t have a lot of time to travel. Given the job.”

“I do miss him now and again. But as you point out, the career. I’ve learned to compartmentalize. Sometimes ruthlessly.”

“I know what you mean. A lot of things can... I don’t know. Get in the way. Can’t they?”

“Yes.” Helena doesn’t know exactly what she’s agreeing with, but Myka seems to have needed the affirmation.

“So where does that leave us?” Myka asks.

Now Helena doesn’t know exactly what question she’s meant to be answering. So she ducks it, treating it as a businesslike request for a status update. “I can report to you that filming on a TV movie with a better title than ‘White Coat Christmas’ begins soon. I have no great hopes that production will go more smoothly than preproduction, but one can hope.”

“I guess one can. Incidentally, _I_ can report that Nev won’t explain what he’s up to.”

“He won’t tell me anything either, nor will Claudia. I suppose we’ll find out eventually… perhaps they’ll let us in on the secret once they get whatever it is they want.”

“When the movie’s done, do you think?”

“One can hope,” Helena repeats.

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not bothering with the Tumblr tags from this one, so what I'll say here is, this has changed a lot from the Tumblr version, not sure it's for the better, mostly for the longer, anyway while it retains the same shape, it's got a bit more flesh on its bones, I tried to make this Myka more of an actual character, but it was a weird struggle, and I don't know what that means, but this is meant to be nothing but a confection, so I hope it's pleasing in some way


	2. Chapter 2

Filming does go far more smoothly… for the first thirteen days, which involve the participation only of the main cast. Helena reflects that she should have interpreted that number as ominous, for after that, the boys commence their five scheduled days of shooting—and constantly, it seems, Helena is needed on set to fix this thing, to address that crisis… even Myka, who is constantly there as well, appears perpetually flummoxed, as if she too is unable to believe the vast array of minor problems three young, handsome men can generate.

And yet, for all the problems, the film itself will, Helena can tell, work as intended. Despite the fact that Kenny flirts with every female entity he encounters, Tak is obsessed with a video game on his telephone, and Nev’s hair is a metallic gray that makes him look like an aged sea creature (“You couldn’t have tried gold,” Helena had asked him, “for a halo effect?”), their scenes manage to proceed on with relatively little actual delay, and they do make beautiful magi. The rest of the production continues in untroubled fashion: in particular, the actress in the lead role of the doctor is quite wonderful, and the writer of the teleplay seems to have put extra effort into giving her somewhat unstereotypical lines to say.

Nev takes his part quite seriously. He says to Helena at one point, “Everybody says they came from the east, right. You know what the Bible really says? How it really translates?” She shakes her head. “‘They came from the rising,’” he reads aloud from a tablet. “Get it? Like the rising of the sun.”

“That’s cool,” Tak says, looking up briefly from his telephone.

“Should use it in a song,” Kenny remarks.

Helena notices that Myka is writing this down.

Helena notices, as she spends more and time in Myka’s nonadversarial presence, that Myka writes a great many things down. And she does physically write them down, in pen, in a small notebook. She listens closely, she writes things down, and she bites her lip—usually her lower lip, but she will occasionally reverse the procedure and catch the edge of her upper lip, barely, with a lower incisor—while doing so.

Half of the boys’ fourth shooting day elapses before Helena realizes that nothing has gone wrong. She should be relieved at having uninterrupted time to work… but instead she finds herself heading for the hospital set. She tells herself she is doing this solely to preempt problems. So as to _save_ time later, because it is nearing October, and Christmas has driven its customary sleigh through her schedule and parked in the wreckage.

Myka is there too, apparently for the same reason. They share their concerns, even laugh about them a bit, as they sit and wait for disaster, side by side, Myka with her notebook, biting distractedly at her own mouth; Helena with various technologies… not biting at anything, but glancing as unobtrusively as she can at Myka.

Nothing troublesome happens. Nothing at all.

They do the same thing the following day.

“He’s not a bad actor,” Myka murmurs to Helena as they watch Nev play the scene in which he explains to the doctor that he and his bandmates must, due to other obligations, drop out of the hospital’s pageant.

The hangdog expression on his face does seem convincing. “He was Romeo once, at school,” she murmurs back. “Then he discovered that singing—and his hair—attracted just as much attention, and with far less work.”

“But he’s not lazy,” Myka says. It is a sweet defense, and it is also, Helena knows, true.

“Well, he grew up,” Helena tells her. “To a certain extent,” she amends, as Nev takes the word “cut” as an indication that he should attempt to juggle several of the scene’s medical-equipment props. Some of which seem extremely sharp-edged.

Myka bends her head down over her notebook. “I can’t watch,” she says. “Just tell me he isn’t slicing up his face.”

“His beauty is intact,” Helena reports, even as, at that instant, an enthusiastically launched scalpel embeds itself in his hair. She hopes it is only a “scalpel,” for she does not want to imagine the social-media horror that would ensue if he lost even the smallest of copses from that forest.

Myka looks up, then looks back down. “My luck, he’ll start some trend,” she grumbles. “Medical equipment accessories.” But she is writing something down. Helena steals a peek: in extremely neat block printing, Myka has written “crazy but: endorsement deals medtronic others? (check on for nev if).” Helena is amused by the speed with which Myka leapt to the self-admittedly crazy idea of monetizing the situation... and she is charmed both by the fact that that monetization would benefit her nephew and by Myka’s use of that concluding “if.” She imagines it is intended to mean something like “If Nev starts a trend as he has been known to do in the past,” but it most likely also carries a hint of “If this is the most preposterous Nev-adjacent thing that happens all day, I will be amazed.”

Nev is wrestling with the knife, but it refuses to come loose. He finds a reflective surface to peer into and continues working... but now one tuft seems to be in real peril. He drops his hands, and then he stalks over to Helena and Myka. He presents himself to Helena, looking just as he did when found himself with a problem when he was a boy: his pretty face even exhibits a small pout. “Help!” he says, just as he regularly did then. He bends his head in front of her. He would not have had to bend nearly so far, not so very long ago.

Helena sighs, but she obliges him by pushing gingerly at the scalpel, which is indeed, and fortunately, fake. She pulls at it a bit, pushes again, pulls again. It seems quite attached, literally and figuratively, to its new home. Devoted to staying. She adds a bit more energy to the work and says, “If I hadn’t _watched this happen_ , I would have concluded you did it on purpose.”

“Not this,” Nev tells her.

Helena says, “Myka, if you’d be so kind as to hold this one piece, just right here? He’s somehow managed to get the blade tangled in—” She stops speaking, for she must clear her throat: Myka, in taking hold of that hank of hair, has brushed her hand against Helena’s. And while Helena has known that her inability to keep herself from glancing at Myka has been meaningful, she has not let herself know _how_ meaningful. _Idiot_ , she thinks, and she directs a bit of that derisive severity outward when she tells Nev, “Hold still, unless you want to undergo a full Samson. And we do have a Hair and Makeup department, darling boy.”

Nev says, managing to sound simultaneously horrified and nonchalant, “First, nobody touches my hair, and second, it’d end up all over somebody else’s Insta.”

“ _We’re_ touching your hair,” Myka says. She looks sidelong, conspiratorially, at Helena.

Helena adds, “And I’m fairly certain everyone has their phone trained on us right now, so I suppose Instagram or similar is where it will end up regardless.”

Nev sighs. “ _I_ suppose it’s okay if it’s the two prettiest ladies in my life. Making a pretty picture on social, no matter whose.”

“I will tell your extremely pretty mother you said that,” Helena threatens. “Now don’t you wish you’d gone to Hair and Makeup instead?”

“I think it’s what a wise man would have done,” Myka informs him. This, too, she accompanies with a conspiratorial look at Helena, plus something resembling a smile.

“You _two_ ,” Nev says, as if he thinks of them as some sort of matched set—greater or lesser authority figures? “Love the whole story, Mum will.”

At last Helena, with continuing help from Myka, manages to twist the implement free, and Nev, perhaps frightened into actual wisdom by even the vague threat of damage to the glorious coif, behaves himself for the remainder of the day.

When the boys are released from their final scene, Helena turns to Myka and tells her, “It was a pleasure working with you.” She doesn’t want to sound as stilted as she knows she does, but she also doesn’t want to risk giving any sort of offense by letting anything... show. These days on set _have_ been a pleasure, particularly when no wise men were misbehaving, and particularly when she was sitting in this chair, at peace with the woman next to her. Helena does not know what to do with this fact—so she falls back on formality. “A pleasure,” she repeats.

Myka gives that sidelong look again. “I assume you mean working on Nev’s hair.” They both smile. “It was for me, too,” Myka adds.

****

“And then I found myself thinking about the _future_ ,” Helena confesses to Claudia when she is back in the office.

“Like with drones delivering pizza? That kind of future?”

“Let us pretend that is what I meant. We’ll move on. But Claudia?”

“Yeah?”

“If you and Nev are planning to resume your campaign of chaos—though I’ve appreciated the recent caesura—perhaps you might contrive some reason, or even reasons, for Myka to be _pleased_ with me, rather than angry at me?”

Claudia shoots finger guns at Helena. “Ha! Done! I’m inviting all of them, the boys and her, to the Christmas wrap party. That should help with your future thing, too.”

The party is held once all the Christmas productions have wrapped, hence its preposterously punning name. Helena claims to be unable to stand it; internally, she chuckles every time she hears it said out loud. “I’m not objecting to your issuing the invitation. But why would they come?”

“They’re the biggest stars we’ve ever had. The whole channel staff wants to meet them.”

“That’s a reason for them _not_ to come.”

“But Nev says they will.” As Claudia says this, her face softens. And Helena realizes that she has been so preoccupied with her own ridiculous concerns that she completely missed the point at which “gazing upon” was replaced by “sleeping with.”

****

The first moment Helena is able to pull her nephew aside at the party, she says, “I _will_ damage you if you hurt her, warm familial feelings aside.”

His hair is orange. It plays poorly, and strangely reflectively, with the bronze notes in his skin, and he looks uncommonly like an offended inverted traffic cone as he says, “Fair but… what if she hurts me? What about that?” Then he smiles. “You think Mum and Dad’ll like her?”

“I think that if your parents think to object to her in any way, I will damage them too.”

“Warm familial feelings out the window.” He looks around at the decorations: they are intentionally a level, or several levels, up from simply tacky. They are the most egregious holiday displays that can be had, and there are more of them each year. Eventually the network will need to find some sort of warehouse to store them in. “Out the window, or up the chimney?”

Claudia, just coming to land beside him, says, “Over the river and through the woods. What are we talking about?”

“Things,” Nev says. He gazes upon her with very clear affection. Helena supposes that they both could do far, far worse than each other… he startles Helena in the next moment by exclaiming, “And there’s Myka finally!” He darts toward her, and Claudia grabs Helena’s arm and begins dragging her in that direction.

Nev is dragging Myka now too, and they meet at a point in the large room where Helena looks down on the floor and sees… “Is that an X made with Christmas duct tape?” she asks.

“Of course not,” Claudia proclaims.

“Why are you in such a hurry?” Myka is asking as Nev deposits her in front of Helena, but then she’s looking at Helena. “Hi,” she says.

“Hello,” Helena says back.

Nev and Claudia have disappeared.

“I’m glad to see you,” Myka says. “I need to apologize.”

“What for?”

“I watched the cut that Claudia sent over. And it isn’t clichéd.”

Helena raises an eyebrow. “Liar. It is.”

“Well, maybe a little. The complications, mostly.”

“Fortunately, no one cares about the complications. All that matters is the sentimental ending.”

“Which,” Myka says, “is very sweet. And... I don’t know. Earned? So I’m sorry for saying what I said, at that first meeting.”

“No need to apologize,” Helena tells her. “I did become inappropriately defensive. I mean, look around you. All of us here, we’re well aware of what we’re selling. And how we sell it.”

Myka does look around. Helena wants to start apologizing herself now, for the eye-damaging gaudiness, but then she sees that Myka’s gaze is fixed on the ceiling above them. Helena looks up… and of course. Of course. She looks down, then up again. It is right above the duct-tape X: a ball of nondescript plastic green leaves and white berries, hanging from a ribbon that looks to be the cheapest of cheap satins. Now Myka looks at Helena, and Helena looks at Myka. “Now I need to apologize,” Helena says.

“For what?”

In answer, Helena raises her hands to Myka’s face, feels the warmth of skin, brushes her thumbs over cheekbones that are as high and singular as anyone’s. She brings their mouths together and feels herself, then Myka, then both of them together, dissolving into a kiss that begins in surprise, then becomes hot and deep. “Come home with me,” she is about to pull away and say, because that is what this kiss is _about_ , what she hopes _all_ their kisses will be about, because this is the start, only the start, she is sure—

—but Myka pulls away instead. “No,” she says. “I’m sorry, but no. I can’t do this.”

“But—”

But Myka is turning away, moving away. She makes it only a few steps, however, before Nev reappears and grabs her arm. “Hey! Where you going?”

“Away from here,” Myka says. “Away from her.”

“Why?”

“I can’t believe you’re asking me that. After what happened, you’re asking me that?”

Helena asks, and she has no idea of whom she is asking it, “After _what_ happened?’

Nobody answers her. Nev is holding Myka by the arms—gently—but he is not letting her leave. He is saying, “Look, ever since you and Abigail broke up, it’s been weird with you and Tak. Plus you’re sad, when you let yourself feel anything at all, and you work all the time. You know that’s true.”

Now Helena asks, “What does Tak have to do with anything?”

Claudia says, “That Abigail who Nev just mentioned? She’s his sister.”

“Myka was involved with Tak’s sister?”

“It didn’t end so good,” Nev says.

Myka says, “Nev, please stop.”

“And what’d you say to me?” he demands of her. “You said, ‘I will never get involved with the family of anybody I manage, ever again.’ It’s why I couldn’t tell you about Helena, never mind she’s perfect for you and you’re perfect for her, never mind she needs a personal life too. You had to get to know her first.”

“You made her hate me!” Helena protests to him.

He turns to her, offended again, less traffic-cone-comically this time. “Did not! Cute little fights, like in your movies! Brought Myka to life, I can tell you, her being so mad.”

Myka’s jaw is set like granite. “You thought you could manipulate me like someone in those _movies_?”

“You _don’t_ hate Helena, do you. I could tell when all your ‘that woman, she drives me crazy’ talk, it turned into just for show, couldn’t I. You like her. She likes you. Where is the _problem_ now?”

Helena feels she ought to be able to leap in with a list of problems, but she cannot really find much to quibble with, not in the situation as it stands. Nev’s methodology itself, perhaps, will need to be dealt with, but she _does_ like Myka. And after that kiss, she is absolutely certain that Myka likes her too. And if one kiss under fake mistletoe seems an unpromising start for anything of consequence? Surely other things of consequence have been built on similarly dubious ground.

But Myka says, “The problem is that I told you something in confidence, Nev. And based on that, you decided that you’d manipulate me—elaborately—into the one thing I said I didn’t want. The one situation I didn’t want to be in.” Her breathing has quickened, and she is blinking quickly. “What do you want from me? I’ve worked hard for you, I really have.” She raises a hand and swipes at her nose. Then she jerks her arm down, as if angry at it for proving that she’s crying.

“Not to work so hard at all,” Nev pleads, but Myka is gone.

Helena looks up at the mistletoe, then down again at the X. She stoops and pulls the tape—a truly hideous hodgepodge of candy canes, wrapped presents, holly, gingerbread men—from the floor. She brandishes it at Nev. “Neville Kahin Wells. How could you possibly have done such a thing?”

“I could have done it from very good intentions.” She has never heard him use such a quiet voice. “I thought it would be so perfect.”

“It is not so perfect,” she assures him. Then she asks Claudia, “And what did _you_ want from _me_?”

“Honestly? I wanted you to get a personal life. So I could have one too.”

“Well, I’m terribly sorry, but apparently that won’t be happening today.” She hardens her features, because if she does not, they will betray her the same way Myka’s betrayed _her_. “And I don’t have time for a personal life, not in any case.” She herself had said it: ruthless compartmentalization. She had said it to Myka, and she should have taken it to heart right then, before any feelings of any warmth at all had time and space to develop between them. “I ought even now to be planning for _next year’s_ slate of Christmas. Why did I come to this party at all?”

Claudia says, “Usually because it helps morale, yours and everybody else’s. But this year I’m thinking no.”

“Morale,” Helena snorts. To Nev, she says, “Let her save face: tell her I didn’t think that kiss meant anything at all. We were under fake mistletoe, apologizing to each other, and it meant nothing at all.”

Nev coughs out “liar.”

He’s right. But his being right does Helena no good at all. None of this has done Helena any good at all.

****

TWO MONTHS LATER

Helena arrives home late on Christmas Eve. There’s something on her front porch: a box. She picks it up, opens it. It’s full of baked goods—decorated cookies, sugared cakes, iced pastries, an impressive array. A small envelope is attached, and inside is a note that reads “It’s Christmas. Please give me another chance.” It’s signed “Myka.”

Helena’s own reaction to this is illegible to her. She’s… pleased? Disquieted? Enlivened? Terrified? She doesn’t stop to think about it; with the box in her hands, she gets back into her car. She drives to Myka’s house. She knows where it is because Nev—at whom she had tried to stay angry, with no success—had insisted two weeks ago, as they were driving to a restaurant, that he _had_ to see Myka, that Helena _had_ to make a detour and get him to her. Helena drove him there but mulishly refused to leave the car while he did whatever business had been the pretext for the visit. No need to put either herself or Myka through any awkwardness, she’d maintained to herself at the time. No need.

Now she is not thinking of awkwardness. She is thinking of that kiss at the party, that kiss that ruined everything then but that might, based on the card on the box beside her, be repeated now. She wants that kiss, or at least the way it began, to be repeated, again and again and again… she wants to feel that serious face dissolve into soft sweetness, again and again and again.

As Helena strides, with something like purpose, up Myka’s walkway, she sees that, save a weak porch light, the house is very dark. That’s when she realizes: it is nearly midnight. _Very_ late. What is she _doing_? Even if Myka does want another chance, she most likely does not want it in the middle of the night… in the middle of the night before Christmas. “You’re an idiot,” Helena says softly to herself. She turns to leave.

As she turns, she sees on the mat, illuminated by that weak porch light, something she recognizes: a box. A box that is very very similar—one might say identical—to the box that Helena had found on her own porch. She glances around, then picks it up. It sports a small envelope very very similar—one might say identical, save for the name “Myka” rather than “Helena” written on it—to the one on Helena’s box. With fumbling, guilty fingers, Helena opens the small envelope. The note it contains is, yes, very very similar—one might say identical, save for the name “Helena” rather than “Myka” with which it is signed—to the one in Helena’s envelope.

She considers calling Claudia and firing her. She considers calling Nev and… well, there is nothing she could do to Nev other than perhaps threaten him with his parents’ wrath. But Charles would note with mock severity that Nev is a grown man (one who has only on rare occasions heeded his father in any case), and Jamilah... she would most likely, as Nev had said so presciently—and, Helena now realizes, so intentionally meaningfully—“love the whole story.” Upon hearing of the scheme, all parts, she would laugh her extremely melodious laugh and tell Helena to kiss Nev for being so smart. And to wish him a happy Christmas and a safe trip home next week.

Helena picks up the box and carries it to her car. She sets it in the passenger seat, next to its twin.

She drives and drives. She’s never seen the freeways, the boulevards, the avenues so empty—but of course it’s early Christmas morning. She’ll have to remember this peace, bear it in mind.

Driving and peace… it’s Christmas. The one day of the year when no one asks Helena anything at all about Christmas movies. The one day of the year when she is not in fact required to think about Christmas.

Instead of thinking about Christmas, she thinks about Myka. Myka and her little notebook. Her little _notebooks_ —“this is the wrong one,” Helena had heard her mutter once, and then watched her scrabble through a shoulder bag that might have been filled with nothing but notebooks. _Why were you charmed by a notebook?_ Helena asks herself, at the same time as she is also wondering if she might be able to stop somewhere and _buy_ a notebook, buy a _case_ of notebooks, and take them with her to Myka’s house, because that is where her car is headed again, after hours of driving and thinking. Hours of driving and thinking: what a foolish way to spend her rare free time. She should have been sleeping or cleaning out her email inbox or cleaning out her kitchen cabinets or doing anything other than driving and thinking about a woman who writes in notebooks. Who pays attention and writes in notebooks. Who bites her lip and writes in notebooks and expertly manages a boy band and is beloved by Helena’s own nephew, who had very good intentions…

Helena parks in front of Myka’s still-dark house. She takes the box that bears the Myka-addressed envelope and goes to the porch; she sets it down in its previous location. Something will happen or it will not. Now, going forward, something will happen. Or it will not.

From behind her, approaching up the front walkway, she hears a familiar voice—the slightly irritated tone of which Helena tries to tell herself she never expected to develop such sentimentality about—say, “Helena? What are you doing here?”

“I… oh. I’m so sorry,” Helena says. Myka must be coming home from… Helena doesn’t want to think about what she must be coming home from. Someone who is not related to anyone she manages, no doubt. And any other thoughts Helena might have been thinking—whatever thoughts had made her put that box back on the porch—now she knows she should not have thought those thoughts, and should certainly not, looking at Myka, still be thinking those thoughts. “I’ll just…” She tries to pick up the box unobtrusively.

It’s surprisingly difficult to pick up a box unobtrusively.

“Why are you stealing a package from my front porch on Christmas Eve?” Myka asks.

“Morning,” Helena says. “Christmas morning. The sun will be up soon. And I’m not stealing it, am I, if I… although I suppose, given that I didn’t originally…” Myka is squinting and shaking her head. “Oh, never mind. Here.” She hands Myka the box. “Happy Christmas. Have a good laugh at my expense.”

Myka looks down at the box, then back up at Helena. “I don’t understand.” She shifts the box to one hand, bobbles it, sets it down, takes the envelope. She opens it and reads the note. She bites her lip, the lower one, then looks up at Helena. “You want… what? Another chance? Look, I’ve been in a studio all night, so I’m probably not exactly _getting_ this.” She bites her lower lip again.

“Wait a moment,” Helena says. She goes to her car, retrieves her own box.

Myka looks at it. She opens and reads _its_ note. “Now I’m _definitely_ not getting this. Because I didn’t.”

“I know,” Helena tells her. “I realized that, when I came here and saw the same box on your stoop that I’d found on mine. Because I didn’t either.”

“So who…”

“I believe one of the culprits belongs to me, and one belongs to you. And they make a _terrifying_ team.” She sighs. “In any case, I’m sorry to have bothered you. Enjoy your Christmas.”

“Wait.”

Helena waits.

“Why did you come here?”

“To…” Helena realizes she has no good answer, certainly not an answer that will not embarrass her terribly, given that the box on Myka’s porch revealed that Myka did not really want another chance. Not that they had had a real first chance… that should have been her first clue, but she had not been interested in paying attention to any clues that might have contradicted the idea that Myka might really… “To…” she tries again.

“Did you really think I’d left that for you?”

“I don’t suppose I will be at all persuasive if I sputter ‘of course not!’”

“Not really.”

“All right. Then yes, I did think you had.”

“Were you… going to give me another chance?”

“I doubt the sputtering would be any more persuasive in response to that question.”

Helena expects a laugh or a lip-bite or _something_ , yet Myka does nothing but look. Helena looks back at her. It’s not unpleasant, as an activity… Helena would be happy to carry on for some time. Finally Myka says, “Do you want some breakfast?”

Helena clears her throat. “Now I really should say a persuasive ‘of course not.’ You just said you’ve been in a studio all night.”

“I didn’t say it would be a _good_ breakfast. I’m not going to cook or anything. I think I might own some Cheerios. And there’s an orange tree in the backyard.” They start looking at each other again, and Helena very nearly blurts something about how breakfast could be the box the Cheerios came in, and that would be fine—but that makes her think “box.” And Myka must have had the same thought, for she looks down at the one beside her. “Then again there’s that,” Myka says. She smiles.

“Do you know what my brother calls Nev, when he’s feeling jolly?” Helena says.

“No idea.”

“‘Never.’ To rhyme with ‘clever.’ ‘Clever Never,’ because he generally always is. Clever, I mean. ‘Clev Nev,’ it’s shortened to, particularly by his younger brother.”

“Younger brother?” Myka asks. “I didn’t know he has a brother.”

“Do I hear music-managerial wheels turning? Don’t get excited; George sings like a Wells, not like a Kahin.”

Unexpectedly, Myka grins widely. “What about you? Do you sing like a Wells?”

“Let us say that your managerial wheels would not rotate even once at the idea of _my_ musical career.”

Myka is still smiling, and Helena is smiling back. It is the easiest exchange they have ever had.

“You know,” Myka says after a moment, “‘Claudia’ doesn’t rhyme with anything similarly appropriate.”

“Claudia is generally inappropriate,” Helena says. She wants to ask if they can go back to smiling and looking at each other, but instead she ventures, “You and I did start on the wrong foot. Both professionally and... personally.”

“I think that was the terrifying team’s fault.”

“In their defense, they do seem to have tried to make it right. _Would_ you give me another chance?”

“As you, or I guess the terrifying team, pointed out: it’s Christmas.”

And if that was not the invitation it sounded like, Helena is likely to find herself in even more trouble than she was at the wrap party, because she is already moving forward—but so is Myka, and they meet somewhere in the middle. Not smoothly, but certainly better than the first time, because this time it is just them, alone in the almost dawn. Myka’s mouth is alive against Helena’s, and the kiss is stirring and rousing and every clichéd word that has ever been used to describe a kiss in any sort of romance.

Overcome, Helena says, “I wanted to buy you a box of notebooks.”

Myka laughs. “That’s much better than what the boys keep saying I need.”

“And what was that?”

“What’s their song about?”

Helena can’t help but smile. “I’ve been informed that it’s a metaphor.”

“For what?”

“Christmas spirit.” But Helena does not want to get ahead of herself. And she does not want to get ahead of Myka either. So she asks, “What about not getting involved with the family of anyone you manage?”

“I did think I had a pretty good plan for getting on with my life,” Myka says. “For compartmentalizing. But do you know what the real problem is?”

Helena shakes her head. There are so many problems…

“The terrifying team… _their_ plan worked.”

****

Helena wakes up to the certainty that her telephone is ringing somewhere very near her head. She moves a hand in its general direction, finds it, and says into it a groggy “H’lo?”

“Where are you?” Claudia’s voice demands.

“Hm?” She takes a moment to realize what the answer to that question actually is: her head is against the back of Myka’s living room sofa, where she remembers watching Myka fall asleep, utterly captivatingly, her head lolling backwards more profoundly after each bite of a sugar cookie, the first thing she took from the box they opened. One bite, two bites, three… four… and then she was asleep. And then Helena must have been asleep as well.

Helena’s initial thought is that she should not convey to Claudia this real answer… but then Claudia says, “Because you’re not at your house, because that’s where Nev and I are, so we hope you’re where we hope you are!”

Nev takes the telephone. “Are you?”

Helena considers dissembling. Then she says a simple “yes.”

Nev answers her with a similarly simple “good.” Then he says, “Talked to Mum and Dad and George a bit. They send love, and Dad says call him or he’ll disown you for turning into a rude American who never calls her brother.”

“ _He_ could call _me_ ,” Helena says, but she is speaking to nothing: Nev has disconnected. She supposes he and Claudia most likely have better things to do.

She sees that Myka is awake and blinking. Myka yawns and says, “I think if we’re going to sleep together, even just _sleep_ together, we should do that in a bed. What do you think?”

 _I think I want to give gifts of notebooks_ , Helena thinks. _I think I am moved to swoon by the preciousness of a yawn. I think… no, I know: I am in love._ She says, “I think the movies I make tend to fade to black at this point.”

“ _You_ don’t make them,” Myka says. She yawns again, and it’s an even more precious grimace this time, because she is smiling as she does it. “Somebody was very clear about that.”

“That’s probably fortunate, given what a hash that particular somebody has made of this one.”

Myka stands and extends a hand down to Helena. “Nobody cares about the complications. All that matters is the sentimental ending. Somebody was clear about that, too.”

Helena takes the hand and moves into Myka’s arms. They sigh into an extremely sentimental, soft, sweet kiss. They sigh out of it just as it begins to catch fire. “All right then,” Helena says. “ _Now_ we should fade to black.”

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again, not-Tumblr tags: Balthasar brought frankincense, (possibly; it depends entirely on whose account of the adoration you’re reading), but even if he didn’t, one of them did, I’d watch this as a Hallmark movie anyway, even though it’s way too self-referential and lamp-shade-y, sometimes you just have to bow to the conventions of a genre, winking all the way,


End file.
